


Up to the Sun (Full Speed Ahead, Mr. Parker)

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Series: 'Til We Found a Sea [1]
Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Underwater (2020)
Genre: Creature!Wade, Crossover, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Sex, M/M, Rimming, Sea Monsters, Shapeshifting, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:15:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27188503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: "Do you...have a name?  A...a thing you're call--"Blood blood blood.  Death.  Death and rot thick in the water and settling, settling.  Bloody carcass in a shallow hollow of sand."Jesus."Blood.  Carcass.  Heavy red water lingering."Fuck, I get it."Blood."I get it!  'Deadpool.'"Satisfaction.
Relationships: Blind Al & Wade Wilson, Jack Hammer & Wade Wilson, Peter Parker/Wade Wilson
Series: 'Til We Found a Sea [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2004295
Comments: 80
Kudos: 609
Collections: Coyo's Halloween Fics





	Up to the Sun (Full Speed Ahead, Mr. Parker)

**Author's Note:**

> My Generic Spideypool Character Note: I don't honestly care which Wade or Peter you want to imagine for this; I didn't have anyone in particular in mind, other than that I generally ignore everything that happened canon-wise after Winter Soldier, so there's like...literally one thing I ever intend to write with Holland's Spidey specifically, and this is not that fic. (Deadpool Movieverse is A-okay! :D I definitely prefer the movieverse versions of Weasel and Domino to comics canon, heh. And May is probably always going to be ITSV!May, because I adore her.) So yeah, I just tossed everything into a baking dish and made canon casserole, seasoned to (my) taste. Bon appetit!
> 
> Current Fic Notes: Time for a treat! By which I mean porn, lol. Theme for the day is It Came From the Deep/Tentacles, in which I have done a weird thing by giving Wade tentacles but not actually involving the tentacles in the sex? Look it would have hurt. A lot. Lol. Anyway, A FEW THINGS:
> 
> 1\. This is a crossover with [Underwater](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBz7ABYuVqw&ab_channel=FRESHMovieTrailers), but pretty much all you need to know that isn't covered in the opening scenes is that T. J. Miller (AKA Weasel) plays a guy named Paul Able who carries around a stuffed rabbit named Lil' Paul. I literally thought he was talking about his dick at first, but turns out no. That's it, the rest is basically Deadpoolverse.
> 
> 2\. Title is from "Yellow Submarine." Subtitle is also from "Yellow Submarine." My stomach still hurts from laughing.

"H-hey. You know the funny thing about going legit? You start thinking that--that so long as you keep your head down, n-nothing can get you. Like if you just...keep ahead of your past, you're gonna...you're gonna...you're gonna d-die in your bed or something. Something boring. You don't think about getting hit by a m-meteor, or having a building fall on you, or getting sw--getting s-swallowed by a....

"Fuck, I don't even know what you are.

"But look, big guy. If you're gonna like...start digesting me anytime soon...can you maybe kill me first? I'd really take it as a favor.

" _Fuck_."

***

The water is full of strange food this waking cycle. Some of them come in hard tunnels, like the bloodworms that carpet the sands near the bubbling columns where the heat breaks through from below. Others come in mobile shells that need to be cracked open, the soft bits scooped out with a barbed tentacle or three. They squirm and thrash the moment the water invades their bubbling homes, even before he finds non-existent gills to dart them through. Their wide-gaping mouths have no feelers to filter in nourishment, and their teeth are blunt and useless. He doesn't think they should be down here at all.

Swimming lazily through waters muddied by still-falling debris, he comes across another mobile shell, already cracked open. A school of first-shifters scent him coming and scatter, leaving behind the half-eaten carcass of one of the strange new fish. Opening his mouth wide, he begins to swallow it up, but the secondary shell makes him spit it back out again. Spewing a burst of acid, he melts it inside its shiny, form-fitting armor, but this time he sips the remains delicately.

Through blood and bone and meat, he tastes strange hungers, a craving for things he doesn't understand. The brain still floats intact in its fleshy brine, and he absorbs it with care.

The digested memories fizz through him rapidly. He sees a seabed that isn't endless, his mind reeling as he sees water that stretches out _beneath_ him, the way sand is a beneath. He crawls on two legs through water-that-isn't-water, as light and thin as the superheated fissures he glides through that make his head feel hazy. He remembers being so hungry for that not-water that it killed him even before the first-shifters had a chance to eat him.

It tasted the way the bubbles from those mobile shells did, that not-water. Experimentally he holds the memory clear in the forefront of his thoughts and _pushes_ , belching a bubble of his own. It floats up, shimmering in the flickering lights of the new fishes' strange colony.

It makes sense. _Up there_ is where their shells keep running to. _Up there_ is where the not-water is. _Up there_ must be where the new fishes come from.

A fresh scent on the water distracts him from the mystery: the sharp excitement of a second-shifter on the hunt. The prickly taste of the juvenile's bloodlust is enough to warn away the first-shifters, but not him. Curious, he swims in chase of it, eeling around the large pieces of shell still dropping from above.

The scent leads him right to the base of the tube-colony, to an opening he's too small to fit through without a lot of squeezing. Disgruntled, he feels out the edge of the hole with the tips of his newly-regrown tentacles, wondering if it would be worth the bother to try.

He freezes as the warm, ripe taste of blood washes over him, the water inside the tube churning with sudden force. The second-shifter caught something, and before he can poke his head in to look, the youngling comes shooting out of the tube, blundering into him in its distraction with something small and soft in tow.

Realizing what it just hit, the youngling screeches in defiance, baring its teeth as it grips harder to its prey. He flares his barbed tentacles in response, curling them out from his back in a wide fan as he bellows back: deep and masculine, all threat. He's twice the size of the still-sexless youngling, the only fourth-shifter to have survived when the massive borer pierced the nest and the Spawner snapped reflexively at the intruder. Anchored far away from his rivals, he'd escaped being dissolved in the Spawner's maw, fuel for the next generation. Of the others, only the younglings sheltered by the Spawner's immense bulk remain.

Sensibly cowed, the youngling drops its wiggling prey as he lunges, darting away before he can engulf them both. He doesn't mind. He's eaten enough of his own kind to know them down to the tiniest flake of skin. These new creatures are much more curious.

He swallows the new fish easily, pleased at the lack of a secondary shell, but something stops him from filling up his stomach pouch with acid. It feels odd to have the thing thrashing around inside him, like swallowing a lurefish whole. It doesn't seem happy, and he belatedly remembers the hunger that had killed the last one, and _pushes_.

Not-water fills his insides, and he immediately feels _terrible_ , pressure squeezing on his inflated stomach from all sides. He tries belching the not-water up, but that just makes the little fish thrash again. He considers digesting it after all, but it's something _new_ , and there's so rarely anything new to be found. He wants to keep it a little longer, so he fills himself again with an uncomfortable bubble, less this time but enough to calm the creature down.

Strangely enough, he feels the inexplicable urge to rise.

***

"But yeah. I had it all planned out, see? Out of sight, out of mind. A year at the bottom of the ocean, and who's gonna remember me, huh? I had this whole _Usual Suspects_ thing going. You ever seen that, man? Nah, 'course you haven't. But that thing with--with Keyser Söze pulling names out of his ass? Yeah. The _rabbit_ was Paul--I just carried him around to remind myself not to answer to the wrong fucking name. Get it? Jack Rabbit?

"Yeah," Weasel says, letting his head fall back against the soft, wet membrane at his back and trying not to think too hard about what it _is_. He's in a fucking Cthulhu-ass nightmare spawn-thing's _stomach_ , like Jonah and the Whale, but he's pretty sure Ahab's not going to be staging a rescue here. Or however that story went. He's never been a religious man, and he's maybe regretting that now, just a little.

"The name's Jack Hammer, actually. But most people call me Weasel," he says, letting himself be swayed gently from side to side with the rhythm of the creature's swimming. It's a little like riding on a train, lulled by the rocking of the cars. "What about you, big guy? I mean, since I figure you're taking me back to your nest and all. It's kind of customary to exchange names, you know?"

**???**

Weasel jolts. Already used to his periodic flailing, the creature belches out all its air, stomach constricting around him in a way that's just _all the bad thoughts ever_ , and inflates around him again with a rush of fresh oxygen from god-knows-where. Gills, maybe. That's not exactly the most pressing question on his mind right now.

"What the fuck," he breathes out slowly, afraid to move, half-afraid to _think_. That just now, that piercing sense of confusion and curiosity. That hadn't been his. "Was that...you?"

 **Impatience. Affirmation. _Question_**.

Holy fuck. _Holy fuck_. The monster is talking to him _in his head_.

"Do you...have a name? A...a thing you're call--"

 **Blood blood blood. Death. Death and rot thick in the water and settling, settling. Bloody carcass in a shallow hollow of sand**.

"Jesus."

 **Blood. Carcass. Heavy red water lingering**.

"Fuck, I get it."

 **Blood**.

"I get it! 'Deadpool.'"

 **Satisfaction**.

Weasel's laugh is more than half-hysterical, but he figures he's got nothing to lose. "You know, with a name like that, you'd fit right in with some of the guys I used to know."

**???**

"Uh." How the hell does he explain the concept of mercenaries to a tentacle-backed fish guy built like the fucking Hulk? "Guys who get paid--uh, given things in exchange for doing things other people don't want them to do. Or have done to them."

**Eating? Eating for food presents? Food presents _just for eating?_**

"Oh, God, fucking no," Weasel blurts, stomach lurching. "I mean, presents, yes, all the presents, but we don't fucking _eat_ each other. What the hell, man?"

The dismissive feeling he's sent reads an awful lot like a shrug. At this point, he's not even surprised. He is _beyond_ the capacity for surprise, floating on a never-ending endorphin rush born of pure terror. It leaves him almost mellow, but he'll take that over pants-shitting panic any day. Resigned to his impending fate, he leans into it instead. Why not strike up a conversation with the thing that's about to eat you? At least his last moments won't be boring.

"So hey, are you taking me back to the wife and kids? You got a nest to feed and I'm the lucky fresh meat?" It'd be just his luck to get a starring role in that old cliché of a big-ass bird carrying someone off to drop in the midst of ominously-oversized eggs.

 **Pride. No, horror. No, definitely smug pride. ...No no no. Nope. Does not want. Swim fast and far**.

"What?" Weasel demands, perplexed.

 **The last. The last the last the last. Last one old enough. The Spawner can wait**.

"Wait?" Weasel squeaks. He does not like the impression of an _actual fucking Cthulhu_ he gets from Deadpool. "Wait for what?"

 **More to grow up. Death by sex totally (not) (not not not) (but) a good way to die**.

"Holy shit," Weasel says, laughing helplessly. "I feel you, man. That'd be a hard choice for anyone to make. I guess that means no nest, though. So where are you taking me?"

 **Up**.

Weasel sits perfectly still, wondering if whatever weird shit he's been breathing has finally killed his last brain cell. "What?"

 **Up up up. Sand. An ocean of not-water. Up**.

"Wait. Is this some kind of _rescue_?"

 **??? Up**.

He laughs again, but this time he can't stop. He's beat to hell, nose pulped, covered in gashes from a smaller creature's claws, but...somehow he's actually going to _live_?

This can't be happening. He's just not that lucky. But if this is the last delusion he gets before dying, what the hell. He's not going to complain.

***

Deadpool spits Tiny Sand Eel out on the edge of a vast rise that seems to go on forever, belching the last of the not-water inside him at the same time. His skin feels unpleasantly tight where he rises above the water, his eyes leaking from the pain of more _light_ than his brain knows what to do with. It's horrible up here, and he wants to bury himself in silt or twist himself up in an entire forest of kelp and never come out. That doesn't mean he's ready to _leave_.

Tiny Sand Eel lies in a boneless pile where he landed, staring straight up into the skull-splitting brightness. He's still making hitching, high-pitched noises to himself, the ones laced with fizzy amusement and bone-deep anxiety. He still tastes like prey--his blood is _delicious_ \--but he's more interesting than any prey Deadpool's ever sampled. Deadpool wants to poke him to see what he'll do next.

Tiny Sand Eel makes a different noise. It sounds like "Holy fucking fuckity fuck."

Deadpool wraps a tentacle around Tiny Sand Eel's ankle. He hadn't realized the new fishes had a whole language of their own, or he would have tried harder to absorb that too. The impressions he's gleaned through skin contact have taught him a little, but most of Tiny Sand Eel's noises are still pure nonsense on their own.

Tiny Sand Eel goes very still, but when Deadpool doesn't yank him back into the water or slice into him with his barbs, he lets out a long, shivery stream of not-water from deep inside his chest.

"Thanks, man. I thought for sure I was a goner. Fuck, I hope the others made it out," Tiny Sand Eel mutters, covering his eyes with one hand before sliding it down his face. "I mean, they had to, right? That Norah, she really knew her way around a rig. Didn't even have to step in and work my magic on the computers, you know?"

Deadpool frowns. **Your nestmates? Podmates?**

"Not...not really. If you asked them, yeah, but...hard to really be friends with people when they think you're someone totally different."

Deadpool's not sure what to make of that. He gets the impression of tactics without a fight, of subtle alterations between what is and what is seen.

 **Different?** he asks, meaning _this_ \--

"Holy shit," Tiny Sand Eel breathes, sitting straight up as Deadpool _pushes_ and _contracts_ and rearranges his form, using the skill he'd grown into with his fourth shifting and the body-memories he'd digested earlier.

He's still bigger than Tiny Sand Eel, taller and broader, but he lacks the head-covering that had tickled him all the way to the surface. His skin isn't quite right either, still rippled and nubbed with the protective calluses he'd sprouted with his latest shifting. The rest seems accurate enough, though the speechless shock he can sense through the single tentacle he left unfurled makes him examine himself critically.

"O-kay, then," Tiny Sand Eel says, glancing down and then quickly away. His face pinks with color like an octopus. "So that confidence was, uh...entirely justified. Just...how did you _do_ that?"

 **Fluid** , Deadpool tries to explain. They change, and they change, and they change. They're nothing but tentacles and teeth and stomachs at first, until they sleep and shift, losing all resemblance to what they were before. And then they eat, and sleep, and change again. He's at his phase of controlled change, that's all. Since he didn't bud the necessary parts for a Spawner on his fourth shift, that's where he'll likely stay.

"That...is the kind of skill some people would kill to have," Tiny Sand Eel says slowly, thoughts tripping over too quickly in his head for any of them to come through clearly. "So, listen. Buddy. Since I owe you one and all. I don't suppose I could interest you in a job?"

***

The thing about harboring an actual fucking sea monster masquerading as a man is that the monster's pretty shitty at the act, at least at first. He seems to like Weasel well enough, but he has no human sensibilities whatsoever, and for all that he looks like a...well, like a crispy, deep-fried human, he's a born predator and acts like one. The very first human they meet--a fucking cop, probably called in by one of the sunbathers Weasel's been trying to avoid--Deadpool kills in a heartbeat, tentacles erupting from his mouth like some kind of...of _mind flayer_.

Shit. Mind Flayers are telepathic too, aren't they? Now he's questioning everything he ever thought he knew about the Monster Manual.

Ignoring Weasel's grossed-out protests and low-key panic--cops are _always_ missed--Deadpool hurks some kind of acid all over the dead guy's face, and...Christ, that's _disgusting_. Weasel has to look away, and he's got a strong stomach for a self-admitted coward, but when he hears the crunching of bone, he chances a glance back.

Flicking out a long, pink tongue, Deadpool scoops the dead man's brain right out of what's left of his skull and swallows it whole, jaw unhinging like a snake's.

"Jesus, man. They're gonna be calling you the Merc With a Mouth if you keep that up."

Deadpool isn't touching Weasel right now, so he just stares uncomprehendingly. He doesn't seem bothered by Weasel's babbling, following amiably along when Weasel leads him away from the rest of his kill. He can't possibly be hungry; there were over three hundred people on the Kepler rig, and Weasel has the distinct impression that he's not the one who taught Deadpool about land-dwellers' silly need for oxygen.

It nearly startles a year off his life when Deadpool suddenly says, "Talk," plain as day.

Stumbling in his tracks, Weasel whips around to stare, jaw dropping open. Deadpool sounds _terrible_ , like he only half-assed the job of changing his vocal chords or just didn't bother in the first place, but that was definitely English just now. "What?"

Deadpool grins. Wow, he really needs to tell the guy he got the teeth _all_ wrong. "Talk more."

"You...did you just pick that up from eating that guy's brain? What the fuck, man? What the absolute fuck?"

"Fuck the what," Deadpool replies with an unpracticed shrug, and the laughter just bursts right out of Weasel, unstoppable.

He knows he should be acting a lot more wary, but what the hell. He _likes_ this guy. It's like having a kraken--curious and clever and _incredibly fucking terrifying_ \--follow you home.

Weasel doesn't even have to check the news to know that "Paul Abel" is better off staying dead, that the company will whisk any survivors out of the public's eye and bury them, possibly literally. Finding the nearest house he can break into, he makes a few calls, cashes in a few favors, and gets himself and Deadpool the hell out of town.

After that, things get interesting.

Turns out Deadpool's mimicry only works in broad strokes, so that's the second thing Weasel teaches him: _don't show your face in public_. (The first is _don't eat everyone you meet; some of them might come in handy later, and it draws a_ lot _of attention_.) He expects Deadpool to kick up a fuss over wearing clothes, but he turns out to _love_ it. Something about shells and camouflage and cover you can carry with you. When Weasel presents him with the leather-and-Kevlar suit he had made, Deadpool practically refuses to leave it. The sunlight still hurts his eyes, but the mask's lenses are polarized. It opens up a whole new world, and Weasel _almost_ feels guilty about inflicting Deadpool on an unsuspecting populace at all hours, not just the middle of the night.

Thing is, Deadpool likes to talk. Despite the dubious way he picked up the skill, he's determined to master it, and he's relentless about practicing. He talks to Weasel, to himself, to the TV screen even after he figures out the people "inside" can't hear him. He talks to random people on the street, and that's always an adventure, because Deadpool's a fucking _sponge_ , soaks up anything he hears or sees and parrots it back, just not always in the ways you'd expect. His speech is peppered through with song lyrics, pop culture references, memes and random trivia, and keeping up with him is a feat worthy of a Jeopardy champion.

Eventually Weasel says 'fuck it' and buys a bar. Networking of all sorts is his greatest skill, and if he has to listen to Deadpool ramble, he'll be damned if he suffers alone.

***

Deadpool likes the human world. They have so many new smells and tastes, and so much interesting food! Even if you're not supposed to eat a lot of it, like the humans themselves or the creatures they keep as pets. That's a strange new concept in and of itself, keeping a food animal to not-eat it, and Weasel does his best to explain: that humans keep other creatures for companionship, for entertainment, or because they're more useful alive than in someone's stomach.

He still thinks that makes Weasel his pet, but Weasel loudly disagrees.

Weasel insists on giving him a human name to use for Important, Official Things, then makes aggravated noises when he gives it to everyone he meets. It's a human name; what else is he supposed to do with it? Humans are weird.

Take money, for example. Weasel doesn't seem convinced, but Deadpool understands the concept very well. He has a keen interest in anything that gets him food, and money can get him a _lot_ of it. What he doesn't get is why Weasel keeps telling him to be more careful with it. It's stupidly easy to get; it's not like what they want him to do in exchange for it is difficult.

Weasel claims to be useless in a fight, but for Deadpool's first job, he sends a human named Buck along with him. Buck is big for a human, solid with meat and fat, but he's good-natured most of the time, doesn't try to tussle with Deadpool over territory, laughs at Deadpool's jokes. He doesn't mind having Buck along and isn't even tempted to eat him. Much.

Weasel takes one look at Buck's ashen face when they return and immediately turns to Deadpool. "What did you do?" he demands as Buck falls onto a barstool.

"You didn't tell me he was a mutant," Buck says shakily, slamming back the whiskey Weasel pours him.

"You have seen his face, right?" Weasel asks, voice flat. Even without touching him, Deadpool knows what Weasel is thinking. Weasel made him promise _fifteen times_ that he wouldn't use his tentacles, but he hadn't needed to ask even once. Tentacles are fine in a pinch, but he has _swords_ and _guns_ and _things that blow up_ now, and barely any chances to use them. He's not going to waste an opportunity just because using his tentacles would be faster.

"He took three bullets to the chest," Buck says, casting another worried look over his shoulder, "and just kept going."

"Shit," Weasel breathes. Now he looks as worried as Buck. "Hey, man, are you okay? Do we need to--Christ, we _can't_ take you to the doc...what--"

Understanding the problem at last, Deadpool _pushes_ , rucks up the bottom of his mask, and spits the three flattened slugs into his hand, dropping them onto the counter. Buck and Weasel just stare.

"Well, don't hold _on_ to them," Weasel scolds at last, pouring Buck a refill and a new glass for himself. "Motherfucking bulletproof...fuck, I should've known."

"Probably, yeah," Deadpool says with a grin. Weasel did watch him rearrange his entire body that one time. Maybe _looking_ human is enough to make people forget you _aren't_ human. Who knows?

"How many more of you are like that?" Weasel asks later that night or maybe early the next morning. Nearly everyone has gone home or passed out, but Deadpool would have to drink the bar dry to really be affected, and Weasel only drinks enough to not look like a lightweight in front of his friends.

Elbows on the bartop, jaw resting on his fisted hands with his discarded mask lying beside his shot glass, Deadpool rolls his head a little to the left, considering. It could be dangerous information to hand out, except it really, really isn't. "Just fourth- and fifth-shifters," he says with a shrug. "So basically just me and the Spawner."

"Uh," Weasel says, shoulders pulling tight as he cringes under Deadpool's curious stare. Weasel's long since lost all of the fear he ever had of Deadpool, but Weasel knows something that's bringing back all those old prey responses now. "It might be just you. I, uh...I looked into things. You know. After we all got back to the surface. Look, they were good people, okay? I know the drilling fucked up you guys' nest and killed a whole lot of you, but nobody went down there thinking, 'hey, let's fuck up an alien ecosystem.'"

"Yeah, whatever," Deadpool says, unconcerned. He'd have eaten half of his fellow fourth-shifters when spawning time came anyway; keeping a Spawner satisfied is hungry work. Like the humans say, it takes a village. "So?"

"So, uh...there was a black box of sorts, like they have on airplanes? Only for the command center. Well, they recovered the logs, and when the last two pods were sent up, your guys went after them. The person who stayed behind...she set the reactor to blow. There wouldn't have been anything left."

Deadpool snorts, knocking back his shot and shaking his head. "It's real sweet of you to worry, Weas." It really is; humans and their pack-bonding are _adorable_. "But don't write me off as the last son of Krypton just yet."

Face briefly screwing up in bafflement, Weasel flicks a hand in front of his face as if to wave away the annoying mosquito of his own questions. "No, really. It was a nuclear reactor, 'Pool--"

"You know the worst thing about eating the really smart scientists?" Deadpool cuts in with a grin. "They all fucking _specialize_. I actually had to read up on this shit, because I know what it _feels_ like, but I couldn't have told you what was happening. But you spent some time down there. You know what a hydrothermal vent is, right?"

"Yeah, it's a crack in the ocean floor that spews out water superheated by volcanic activity."

"Right. And in some places, the water comes out so hot it's not even water anymore. It's like half a gas--that's how hot it is."

"Okay...?" Weasel's got his alley cat face on, already not liking where Deadpool's going with this but hanging in there all the same.

"I usually avoid those myself, but the Spawner uses them to warm up enough to jump-start her spawning cycle. The cooler ones are kinda nice, though. Feels a bit fizzy, and it'll strip a few layers off you for sure, but I dunno; I like the tingle. It's worth a regeneration or two."

"Regeneration. So you're not just a human...shaped ballistic tank."

"Nah. And it just goes faster the older you get, so me? You could probably cut my head off, and it'd just grow back. The Spawner, though, is much, much better at it. Fifth-shifters, right? You could take her down to whatsit, atoms, and just wait a week.

"So, yeah--the small fry, they're toast, sure, but she's probably still down there, making a new nest. I wouldn't worry about some Namor-style invasion, though," he adds, shifting his cheek onto one fist as Weasel distractedly pours him another shot. "Most of us only digest enough body-memories to learn our prey's instincts. Makes things easier to hunt if you know which way they'll break when they panic.

"Actually learning enough to come up here, though? Ha," he scoffs, feeling the old, familiar bitterness rise once more. Joke's on them, though; their disgust at his differences is why he lived. "It's a good thing I'm hard to kill, because between you and me, they'd have culled me before the next spawning if they could. I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm kind of crazy."

"Amen to that." Rather than dismissive, Weasel sounds relieved.

***

Maybe it's weird to worry about someone like Deadpool. Deadpool can manifestly take care of himself, and even when he can't, he always comes back. He's got plenty to say about humans and their tendency to bond with anything, but the truth is, Weasel thinks he sounds kind of tickled by it. He remembers reading somewhere--probably a shitpost, but that doesn't make it wrong--that wild animals who've never been pet before have been known to go absolutely wild over it once they experience it for themselves, and that's exactly what Deadpool reminds him of: a shark who's just had a hook removed from his mouth by some poor sap who's going to be pestered all the way back to shore.

It probably says a lot about him that he considers Deadpool his best friend, or maybe it just says something about the people he hangs out with. No, probably just him. But Deadpool's surprisingly good at it once you get past a few of his quirks. Weasel has no doubt in his mind that Deadpool would devour his corpse without hesitation if he died, but if anyone else tried to kill him, Deadpool would shred their face off and use it for taco filling. He may be breathtakingly tactless at times, but he's the least judgmental person Weasel knows, just takes everything as another facet of an alien culture and asks a million questions if it's something that catches his interest.

He has no shame, either. Deadpool likes what he likes, and he gives no fucks about what anyone else thinks about it. The apartment Weasel helped him find is full of 80's vinyl records, Golden Girls DVDs, and classic comic books. There are Hello Kitty sheets on his bed. If Weasel wants to geek out about a new gaming manual expansion or an upgrade for the computer system he keeps in the back of the bar, Deadpool just lets him talk.

Still. Against the odds, Deadpool is a highly social creature coming from a close-knit but highly _antisocial_ culture, and Weasel _worries_. The mutant community doesn't seem to know what to make of him either, but his status as an active mercenary with spotty empathy isn't doing him any favors. He did hit it off with an old blind woman, so at least Deadpool has two people he can be himself around if he cares to, although in Al's case, it's because she's still in the dark as to what he is. Pun maybe half intended.

It bothers him to think that Deadpool is isolating himself, and if there's one thing he does know, it's that you don't put a highly social creature in a cage all by itself. They tend to go a little nuts.

Or in Deadpool's case, a little more nuts. And Weasel happens to like Deadpool's crazy at just the level it is.

Then Deadpool rocks up to the bar one day talking a mile a minute about Spider-Man, and Weasel quickly finds himself longing for simpler times.

***

The first time Deadpool runs into Spider-Man is kind of a fiasco. There are some guys with guns, but there he is with bigger guns, and it all could probably have been resolved with a bit of measuring until Spidey showed up and started webbing everyone to the alley walls.

No biggie. Deadpool slides a tentacle free, keeping his barbs retracted so they don't catch on his suit, and slips a knife out of its sheath. Dropping it into his right hand, he saws away at the webs while Spidey's distracted with the others.

"You know," he says conversationally as he works, "I kind of have dibs on those guys. I mean, I am the one they were hired to kill. I was looking forward to hearing who hired them."

"You can ask them on the way to jail," Spidey says, though he does hesitate when he hears that Deadpool was the victim here.

Ha, no, he can't even think that with a straight face. Still. It's cute.

"Aw, c'mon. Isn't that against the bro code?"

"I am _not_ your bro," Spider-Man insists, stealing a phone off one of the thugs to make a phone call.

"Well, that's cool, 'cause I don't think they'd let us get married if you were. So hey, are you free after this?"

Spidey does a classic double-take, and it's all Deadpool can do not to laugh. He loves humans--they actually do all the things you see in the cartoons. It's great!

"What?"

"The name's Wade," he says, sawing through the last of the webs keeping him in place. "Wade Wilson, but you can call me Deadpool." He kind of hopes Spider-Man does. He doesn't mind his human name, knows Weasel picked it because it reminds him of waves, but he's been Deadpool for as long as he can remember. Answering to anything else is just weird.

As he brushes himself off, Spider-Man brings his hands up to shoot another web at him, but this time Deadpool is prepared. Dodging to the side, he shakes his head. "Hey, now. You want to play that hard on the first date, that's cool, I'm down, but you gotta at least take me to dinner first."

Seeing what sort of reaction his trash talk will get from someone new is an endless source of amusement. Irritation, offense; horror if they've heard about what's under the mask, and he can _always_ tell who's heard what's under the mask. Doesn't matter if what they've heard is true.

Spidey just tips his head to one side, mask moving slightly as if he's just arched a brow. "Are you trying to tell me you're not that kind of girl? Because that's not what I heard."

He's so busy being startled by laughter, he doesn't dodge the next web fast enough. Thudding back into the wall a second time, he hangs there and lets the sticky stuff take his weight, hilarity taking over. He's never had anyone joke back with him before, not in the middle of a fight, or what could have been a fight if he'd kept his head in the game.

All at once, he wants to see what Spider-Man's got, how fast and how clever and how strong New York's favorite protector will turn out to be. He's heard some stories, but he hasn't paid them nearly the attention he should have. He's regretting that now.

"Okay, you got me," he says, grinning at his own pun. "I'm exactly that kind of girl. But you still owe me tacos."

"You're welcome to collect next time I see you," Spidey says dryly, pressing three numbers on the thug's phone. Deadpool's willing to bet it's not the number for Information.

"I'll hold you to that!" Deadpool calls after him as Spider-Man saunters away, secure in the belief that the lot of them will be rotting in cells for a good long time.

Sweet. Summer. Child.

Once he's sure they're alone, a fast wiggle and slice with his barbs cuts him away from the wall, and he schlorps his tentacles back in through the holes under his back harness before anyone's the wiser.

"Now," he says with a peppy grin as the thugs' wide eyes get even wider. "Where were we?"

***

Al's used to being on her own, and she's way too old to have a roommate, so it's a good thing Wade doesn't live with her. That said, she's about to start charging him rent, considering how often he's over at her place these days. Most of the time she doesn't mind--he actually thinks she doesn't notice that he's got just the right number of hands to help her assemble furniture kits, which is to say eight too many--but he's spent the past two months moaning like an abandoned calf after some boy, and she's just about reached her limit.

"Have you thought about just asking him out?" she interrupts his latest spiel about how Spider-Man guards his territory so skillfully, you'd have to be crazy to challenge him on his own turf, which of course means Wade's going to do it tomorrow, because he's just so _dreamy_.

"Yeah, that first night," Wade says predictably. "He webbed me to the wall."

Al sighs. "Not to piss him off, you knucklehead. I meant for real."

There's a sharp rustle of denim and cotton as he sits up from his cross-legged slouch on her floor. "Wha...why...would I do that?"

Al looks so pointedly heavenward, even someone blinder than her could figure it out. "Have you not listened to yourself at all? You clearly have it bad for him. Stop fucking around, or you'll never get around to fucking."

The high-pitched sound Wade makes only barely passes for human, but she lets him believe she's fooled when he tries to cover it up with a cough.

"Look. Stop antagonizing him and try doing something nice for him. Bring him dinner or something," she suggests, though for all she knows, she's just sentenced Spider-Man to receive a freshly-killed shark. Wade's a big guy, she can tell; he can probably murder a whole lot of seafood if he's trying to impress a mate. "Just don't tell me anything you two get up to if it works out."

She's gone this far in life without being subjected to tentacle porn; she'd like to keep that streak to her grave, thank you very much.

***

Deadpool leaves Blind Al's apartment in a daze, swearing he'll never go back, even though he knows he'll probably break that oath within three days, tops. He's never really thought about humans like that before, and he blames her entirely for the fact that he's thinking about them now. It's not like human sex is a mystery to him. He's got plenty of body-memories to tell him which bits go where. But being crazy enough to enjoy living amongst them doesn't mean he's crazy enough to want to _fuck_ his _food_.

The thing is...Spidey doesn't smell like food to him, and it takes Al telling him to man up for him to notice.

It's a mutant thing, he's pretty sure. A lot of mutants and mutates smell of something a little Other, sometimes a _lot_ of that something, depending on their mutation. Spidey smells a little of that mineral sharpness the Hulk reeks of, but blunted and tamed. His human musk is all threaded through with another, giving him a lighter, earthier scent. It's a bit like standing in the middle of a library and smelling the rain through open windows. It sounds like it'd be a weird combination, but he likes it. A lot.

Maybe not as much as Al thinks he does, but Spidey's a pretty decent guy. He probably _should_ stop hassling him, extend a peace offering, even.

So. Bring him something, huh?

He can do that.

***

After careful consideration, Peter can safely say that he has no idea what's up with Deadpool. Hawkeye had tried to warn him when he'd mentioned their first meeting in passing--if "You poor bastard" counted as a warning--but he hadn't realized at the time why gaining Deadpool's attention was A Problem.

That was before he had an insane mercenary popping up all over his city, not to murder anyone, but to heckle his criminals, provide running commentary on his collars, and generally annoy him until he gave in and picked a fight. Fights Deadpool never seemed interested in finishing; despite gaining the upper hand several times, Deadpool always disengaged before a decisive winner could emerge, disappearing before Peter could catch him.

Then, two months later, Deadpool changed tactics again. Now he shows up to heckle Peter's _supervillains_ , casually evening the odds when it looks like Peter's in over his head. Peter reads him the riot act when he nearly kills one of Kingpin's goons in the process, and the brawl that devolves into proves Deadpool's still happy to fight if Peter brings it, but it almost seems like he's trying to...help?

Honestly it reminds Peter of a little kid on the playground pulling the pigtails of a girl he likes, but Deadpool's a grown-ass man. Surely he has more experience and emotional maturity than _that_.

***

"Holy shit, Weas. I think I actually _like_ Spider-Man."

Looking up from his monitor, Weasel eyes Deadpool like he's waiting for the rest, but that's it; that's all he's got.

"Okay...? Uh...is this a trick question? Were you looking for a particular reaction? Because I thought you already knew that."

"What? No! He's...!" There is literally no way he can end that sentence and not get kicked out of the bar for a week, so he settles for failing an arm in Weasel's general direction.

"Why, yes," Weasel says dryly, desk chair creaking under him as he sits back and laces his fingers across his stomach. "I have indeed heard that he's a smooth-talking certified genius. Thanks so much for noticing."

"Rrgh," Deadpool groans, throwing himself down on the backroom's couch. The light coming in through the blinds says it's a little after dawn, and both of them should be asleep, but Weasel's lead on a drug formula someone wanted stolen uncovered a trafficking ring to supply the current owner with test subjects. From a simple crash and grab that could've been handed off to anyone, suddenly Deadpool's looking at a very busy week. Not unusual, but it was sitting here wondering how Spidey would react to hearing about the competing assholes he plans to wipe off the map that made him stop and think.

It's not like he's doing this for Spidey's approval. While he's busy with the wetwork, Weasel will be emptying the targets' bank accounts, so it's safe to say he's got a pretty good incentive to take both groups out. But that little thrill of anticipation at the idea Spidey might praise him for it--what the hell had that been?

Weasel grimaces in secondhand mortification as he clears his throat. "Is that...for you, is it...I mean, is that like playing with your--"

"It's not a food kink!" Deadpool blurts at the same time then drops his face into his hands. He can't do the blushing thing like humans do, but he thinks he knows what it feels like now.

"Well...at least we cleared that up?"

"Good talk," Deadpool mutters into his palms. "Let's never do it again."

***

Peter narrows his eyes. His Spidey-sense may be quiet, but something is definitely up.

Glancing sidelong at Deadpool, currently sitting on the ledge of the same roof a few feet away, he finds the man fiddling with his mask again, touching where it tucks into his collar as if to make sure it's still in place. Which is strange, because not only has he seen Deadpool's skin before, the man has never been the least bit shy around him from the moment they met. Peter can't think of any reason for him to be anxious now unless something happened. He doesn't seem to be in any pain, though, so...was someone a dick about the way he looks? Enough so that Deadpool actually took it to heart?

Peter frowns, focusing his attention back out over the city. It's been a quiet night, especially with Wade tagging along and halving his work. Ever since he put his foot down about killing in his city, Deadpool's been surprisingly respectful of Peter's limits. He's still an ass sometimes, but if Peter stops and explains exactly how he's being an ass, he generally doesn't repeat the mistake...unless he just doesn't like someone. Then he ups his game. The point is, he's _trying_ , which is a lot more than Peter can say for most.

"Hey," he says, making up his mind all at once. "It's pretty dead tonight. You want to call it?"

"Uh, sure," Deadpool says. "You're the boss." He seems disappointed, and Peter doesn't think it's his imagination.

"Great. You want to stop for food somewhere instead?"

Deadpool perks up all at once, mask pulling tight around his grin. "Hell, yeah! So what sounds good? Pizza? There's a burger place across the way...."

"I was thinking Mexican. I still owe you tacos, right?"

Deadpool's cheerful whoop nearly distracts him from the man's furtive behavior, like suddenly it matters what Peter thinks of his face.

***

They're following the sounds of screaming down a dark alley when something big leaps out of the shadows and nearly flattens Spidey. Spidey leaps up and to the side, sticking to the wall, but his attacker follows, clinging to the brick as oversized claws sink in and catch.

The creature's like nothing Deadpool's ever seen before: human-shaped but not human-jointed, its swing-hinged jaw full of impractically jagged teeth. Its skin looks slick and oily, vibrant crimson banded with deep black markings spreading out from the center of its chest. Its eyes, if those are eyes, are huge white splashes across its angular face, wobbling at the edges.

"Spider-Man," the thing growls as Spidey leaps across the alley to the opposite wall.

"Carnage," Spidey replies warily, poised on the tips of his fingers and toes.

Deadpool already has his katanas drawn, but for all that it makes his own territorial instincts snarl and snap at the outrage, he forces himself to wait. The two seem to know each other, and he doesn't want Spidey pissed at him if he butts in where he isn't wanted.

"Deadpool," he tosses into the ring anyway, just in case they've forgotten him. "So now that everybody knows each other--"

"I told you I'd be back," Carnage rumbles, a line of spikes rising along its spine and the outsides of its arms. Deadpool wonders only for a moment if this thing is like _him_ , but one sniff dispels that theory in a hurry. Whatever it is, its scent is completely alien.

"Look," Spidey says, his voice taking on that perfectly steady tone he only uses when he's actually scared shitless. "I don't know how you got out of containment, but whoever's body you're using, you need to let them go. You know I can't let you--"

Carnage laughs, low and menacing. "You want me to switch hosts? I thought you'd never ask."

The thing lunges in the next second, slamming hard into the wall Spidey rapidly vacates. Brickwork cracks under its weight, dust raining down into the alley from the deep punctures made by its claws, but it only pauses there a second. Leaping after Spidey, it ignores Deadpool completely until he lunges for it and buries his blades in its back.

"'Pool, wait!" Spidey calls, firing off a web as he does a graceful backflip to safety . "That's a symbiote--there's someone inside him! If you kill him, you'll kill them both!"

That's plenty acceptable to Deadpool, but before he has a chance to slice first, grovel later, the symbiote rips _itself_ free, whipping around as if the blades skewering it are only a minor annoyance. Grabbing him with one hand that doubles in size in mid-reach, it tosses him down to the back of the alley where he rolls to a clanging halt against the side of a dumpster.

A strangled whimper freezes him in place as he staggers to his feet, and when he turns to look, he finds a girl wedged into the smallest space possible between the dumpster and the wall of the building. Deadpool's no good with human ages, but he puts her in that weird limbo where she's old enough to be out with her friends but not old enough to be out _alone_. She's skinny and pale and looks ready to pass out at any second, and while every instinct he has is yelling at him to get back to Spidey, there's something about the utter helplessness of human spawn that gets him every time.

"C'mon, kid," he says, reaching out a hand. "Let's get you out of here."

The wall at her back is too tall for her to climb, but not for him. Hoisting her up to the top of the dumpster, he holds her steady until she finds her balance on the metal rim, not the flimsy plastic top, and scrambles up after her. From there he tucks her under one arm and jumps for the nearest window ledge, grabbing on with his free hand and using a jutting breaker box and a convenient drain pipe to scramble up to the low roof.

"D-do you do p-parkour?" the girl stammers out in a weird atonal voice, wide-eyed and shocky.

Deadpool grins. "I'm kind of the opposite of a pirate. Now start running, kid. There's a fire escape on the other side; use it."

He doesn't bother taking the careful route back down, jumping straight back into the alley below and letting his fabricated bones take the punishment. Between one stride and the next, they've knitted back together, and he throws himself forward into a run. He can still hear Spidey and Carnage fighting just up ahead, and that's bad, because Spidey's usual method is to put a good bit of distance between him and an enemy. Spidey's crazy-strong, but he doesn't like close fighting if he can help it. When he's got room to maneuver, he doesn't have to worry so much about pulling his punches.

Spidey's strength doesn't seem to be doing him a lot of good this time, because Carnage already has Spidey down, and Spidey's attempts to pry that huge hand off his neck don't seem to be getting him anywhere. "No, don't," he chokes out, but he's staring past Carnage's shoulder, one hand leaving his desperate tugging at Carnage's fist to wave Deadpool frantically back. "I can't keep him out--"

Flinging himself between them with a snarl, he elbows the symbiote in the face as he adds his own hands to Spidey's. The thing barely budges, and when its hand finally shifts, it tugs Spidey's mask along with it. Its hand has gone _through_ the mask, he realizes with a jolt of horror, and if it's gone through the mask--

Spidey's scrabbling hands go wild, and Deadpool just snaps.

Wrenching his head around, he opens his mouth wide, lets down all of his teeth, and buries them in Carnage's forearm. His mask shreds around the bite as the symbiote howls, and for a moment he feels the flesh he's caught go soft and amorphous. It pours itself down his throat in a flood, but he _pushes_ , fills his inner cavity with a pocket of acid, and melts the intruder into soup.

Shrieking, the creature jerks itself away from them, bulking out in warning as it fattens its spines to thick blades. Deadpool's tentacles slide out of his back all on their own, barbs descending as he flares them out like arching snakes in blatant threat. Clutching its damaged arm, Carnage wavers, head jerking minutely to stare past Deadpool to where Spider-Man lies gasping for breath.

Widening his grin, Deadpool forces his claws through the leather of his gloves and flicks out his tongue, long and pointed, to scour the last trickles of Carnage's flesh from his chin. "What's it going to be, meat?" he taunts, savoring the shift in its scent as caution overwhelms hunger.

He nearly sprints in chase of it when it bolts straight up the side of the building to his right, taking off across the rooftops at a dead run. In the next instant, he wishes he had. It would have been the perfect excuse to ditch before he had to explain this to Spidey.

Retracting his barbs and pulling his tentacles in fast, he swallows hard, working his jaw as he wills himself to calm down, be cool, put the fucking teeth _away_. Not that the giant hole in his mask isn't going to be a tiny bit suspicious, along with the whole: 'I just melted a mouthful of Kevlar, and boy was it tasty' thing. Weasel maybe has a point; he is _shit_ at thinking things through.

"'Pool?" From the sounds of it, Spidey's struggling to sit up, coughing as he manages a few deep breaths. Deadpool stays right where he is, palms still pressed to the ground. If Spidey wants to get the hell away from him, he's not going to follow.

"Yep. Same 'Pool time, same 'Pool channel. In case you were wondering if I've been possessed, or inhabited, or, uh...whatever weird thing I just haven't heard of yet. Like symbiosis! I was definitely not expecting that."

He's not expecting the hand that settles, light and hesitant, between his shoulder blades, either.

"Huh," Spidey says hoarsely. "You know...that explains some things."

***

The discovery that Deadpool isn't a bad element, just laughably bad at being human, knocks Peter sideways for a bit. He spends about a week wondering if he's been culturally insensitive before realizing that no, Deadpool really is just an ass sometimes. He is, however, starting to spot the difference between Deadpool being obnoxious on purpose and when he's genuinely clueless.

He has a few hang-ups of his own to get past, and that's...a little more difficult. There's a part of him that wants to be angry at Deadpool's friend Weasel, that wants to believe Wade could have been anything when he first came to land. That he didn't have to become a killer. But the more he hears of what his life was like before, the more he has to come to terms with the fact that Wade is a predator, full stop. That he's happy with what he is. The fact that he hadn't treated the world like a free buffet, that he stuck it out long enough to learn the value humans place on their morals, is nothing short of miraculous.

He also needs to retrain himself to think of him as Deadpool again when 'Wade' has been creeping into his vocabulary for months.

"I mean, it's a translation," Deadpool explains to him one afternoon, unmasked and unguarded, surprisingly patient with Peter's endless questions. They're at Deadpool's apartment since this isn't really a talk to have out in the open, and as always, Peter's surprised at how normal the place looks. The evidence that Deadpool _likes_ human things is all around. How he feels about humans? Peter's still trying to figure that out.

"Translation?"

"I could show you if you want," Deadpool offers, stripping off a glove and holding out his hand. What he'd taken at first as scars, Peter now knows is just the natural texture of his skin. At his current life cycle, Deadpool would have been part of something like a warrior caste, expected to protect the nest and fight for the right to reproduce. His skin is correspondingly tough, perfectly healthy despite the way he looks.

"Do you need to transform or something?" Peter asks, reaching back gamely. He expects Deadpool to haul him up off the couch and drag him off somewhere, but Deadpool hesitates, hand hovering over his own.

"Ha! Not on dry land, pal, and there's no way I'd fit in the bathtub. I'm pretty big--bigger than I remember, probably, considering I have been eating _well_ up here."

Before Peter can decide whether or not to feel queasy over that, Deadpool leans abruptly forward, eyes shining with excitement as he catches the long sleeve of Peter's Henley. "Do you have any idea how cool it is that you can just...give people things? And they give you _food_? That's so awesome! Man, I am never going back."

Laughing helplessly at Wade's enthusiasm, Peter shakes his head. "Okay, so what do you need to show me, then?"

"Oh, yeah--we're Vulcans! Well, not literally...I mean, the ocean can be _like_ a desert in places, and obviously I don't have green blood, but I am a touch telepath. Surprise!"

All at once Peter's glad Deadpool didn't just grab him before explaining first. Not just because it gives him a chance to ask how much Wade--Deadpool--will see, but because it says a lot about his respect for privacy and how humans feel about it.

"So are you going to be able to read everything in my head?"

Deadpool scrunches his face up, groping for concepts he's probably only had to explain once before. "Not exactly? It's more like having a conversation. If you really don't want me to know your feet are ticklish and you're thinking really hard about how much you don't want me to know that, then yeah, you're going to be shouting it in my ear the whole time. But if you just kind of forget about it, then all those other thoughts go quiet."

"Okay...well, first, my feet _are_ ticklish, so let's just get that out of the way now," Peter admits, knowing that's the only thing he's going to be able to think about now that Deadpool's brought it up.

Wade laughs, fingers tightening around Peter's shirt cuff in a brief squeeze. "Good call. You're getting the hang of this already!"

"And second," Peter says, gathering his courage as he pulls off his mask with his free hand. "My name's Peter Parker. I just wanted you to hear that on purpose, not on accident."

Wade stares for a long moment, eyes huge and lips parted. He looks almost panicked, and as he grabs for Peter's hand without warning, Peter gets a startlingly clear impression of **quick quick quick, before he sees** \--

"Deadpool?" If he really doesn't want to do this--

With the sound of his name, _meaning_ is conjured into being: the memory of a first kill: some sort of fish not seen but sensed, larger than he is, but he took it down all by himself and guarded the carcass jealously. He'd been young then, not long out of the egg sac but already fierce, buzzing with the drive to hunt and feed and grow.

Sharing that alien consciousness, it's hard to reconcile such brute simplicity with the man who argues the relative merits of Original Trek versus Next Generation with him, who knows a dizzying array of mostly useless facts and all the lyrics to every Wham! song ever written. That such an astonishing capacity for _more_ was always present isn't entirely a surprise, but the wild luck it took to bring them to this point, sitting on Deadpool's couch a world away from that other life, boggles the mind.

He's so incredibly grateful to have ever met Deadpool, and he can only hope the feeling is mutual.

**Disbelief. Wonder. Me? Me me me you me?**

Peter chuckles, gripping Deadpool's hand more tightly. "Yeah, of course. We're friends, right?" he asks aloud, hoping that will help him focus on just his words and not the interest that's been growing as Deadpool proved himself to be more than his reputation. It feels especially chancy to risk that leaking through now, knowing that Deadpool isn't human and may not see his entire _species_ in that way at all--

**Shock. Hope. What? Fluster. _What?_**

Peter opens his mouth, face hot and scrambling for an explanation, but the wave of confused affection that crashes over him steals his breath. He gets a fragmented montage of Deadpool's journey from food to friend in his attitudes towards humanity, the shift in perception triggered mainly by three figures: a man that must be Weasel, an old blind woman he hasn't mentioned yet, and Peter himself.

 **You** , Deadpool agrees without hesitation. **You** , who Deadpool doesn't know what to do with, but who he'd rather keep close in perpetual confusion than run away from to avoid understanding. **You** , a surprise, nothing Deadpool ever expected, but whose face Deadpool wants to look at forever.

"Oh," Peter says and feels like an idiot for such a lackluster response, except he can feel the bright burst of Deadpool's amusement, completely free of mockery.

 **Overwhelm** , gets tossed back at him, and _yes_ , that's it exactly. He can already tell this connection is going to come in handy, because he's great at talking circles around people, but not so great at just _talking_.

What he knows is this: Deadpool likes him, may even be attracted to him once he gets over the shock of the possibility, and wants _something_ with him, even if he isn't clear yet on what form he hopes that will take. And Peter likes sex, but he's been taking care of himself since...well, for a while now, and the only thing he really _needs_ is someone who will _be there_. He can't lose another person, not to death or indifference or...he just can't. But he's pretty sure Deadpool won't leave him hanging.

Stroking his thumb over the back of Deadpool's hand, he takes note of the way Deadpool's entire being lights up at the touch and smiles.

"Yeah," he says, basking in Deadpool's uncomplicated joy at the closeness, the contact. Somewhere in the back of one of their minds is a dim memory of the nest, thousands of them tangled together along the underside of a vast, sheltering Other. Never alone. "That sounds good to me too."

***

It seems like something Deadpool should have realized earlier, but he'd sort of forgotten how good it feels to just _touch_ someone until Peter came along. Maybe it was because back then, there was really no way to get away from his nestmates unless they were hunting. The closeness of the nest was just something he'd taken for granted, and when he'd traded it for the camouflage of the suit, he hadn't thought much about it then, either. If people can't see him, they won't question too closely, and they won't run away. These things are important.

Peter _likes_ seeing him. Likes touching him, running his fingers along the bumps and valleys of his skin, pressing the pads of his fingertips to the ridges of his knuckles. He likes the way happiness bursts like firecrackers in Deadpool's chest, the weird, shivery noises that thrum low in Deadpool's throat as giddiness rises until he wraps Peter up in both arms and hugs the stuffing out of him. Peter always laughs, so many good feelings echoing between them, it's hard to put a name on any of them. Deadpool doesn't really try. He's still new enough to feeling half of them that he's content to just let them wash over him and enjoy the moment.

"Are you sure you're not an octopus?" Peter jokes after being felled by another cuddle attack. They're on the couch, Peter sitting with his back to Deadpool's chest. Deadpool's arms are wrapped around his torso, keeping him close, knees bent to cage Peter in with his thighs. He'd let him go, of course, if Peter struggled, but Peter's thoughts are a warm soup of lazy contentment and love.

"Pfft. I'm much tastier. And much more impressive," Deadpool boasts. Octopus, ha. That's good eating, tho--

Though Peter drags his thoughts away the moment he realizes he's doing it, Deadpool feels them veer briefly to interest, curiosity. Embarrassment, because Deadpool's feeling it too. And he gets it, he does, but...nuzzling into Peter's hair, he rests his face there for a second, breathing him in, but there's none of the _weird, this is weird_ , you _are weird_ he was dreading. There's just Peter with his old books and petrichor scent, who he adores beyond all reason.

It's a little awkward out of his suit with its strategically-placed holes, but he extends a tentacle and wriggles it down to slide out from under the hem of his hoodie, curling it around to the left so Peter can see it without it touching him. Deadpool's learned a few things about humans, like how things that look too much like them but in the wrong shape freak them out. The smooth, flesh-toned tentacles of a first-shifter would have been considered gross, but his--darker, patterned and textured--spark curiosity instead.

Peter frees one of the hands laced with Deadpool's own but doesn't reach out. "Can I?" he asks, his thoughts tasting of nothing but keen interest without fear.

"Help yourself," Deadpool invites, holding the extra limb perfectly still.

Peter skims his fingertips over the top of it then quickly shifts to a firmer touch when a burst of ticklishness arcs between them. "Huh...they're smooth," he says, feeling over one of the calluses with his thumb.

"Smooth in every direction," Deadpool chirps, cackling when Peter frees his other hand to reach back and whap him over the head. Damn, he loves the shark gag. It's a fucking classic.

It's a little weird, having someone touching his tentacles. He's done his research, more to know what to expect if he's ever discovered than anything. He's seen the porn and giggled his way through it when he wasn't throwing popcorn at the screen. His tentacles are for fighting and anchoring himself to prey or the nest. To a mate if he survives until spawning season, but Peter's not giving off the kind of pheromones Deadpool's body understands. Probably for the best unless Peter's _really_ into painplay. His barbs aren't just for show.

"Not too weird?" he asks, just to make sure. He makes a loop around Peter's arm, then another, keeping his barbs carefully retracted. Peter just watches, fascinated. Relaxed.

"Nope. C'mon, give me the rest."

Deadpool takes him at his word, and _oh_ , this is nice. He slings his coils around Peter's shoulders, his hips, wraps his thighs and _squeezes_ with his tentacles, his arms, his legs, his face buried in Peter's neck. Not too tight, and he loosens his grip before Peter can feel uncomfortable, though he knows Peter's strong enough to pull free if he really wanted to get away. The point is not to make him want to; he wants Peter to stay.

"So the tentacles aren't sexy tentacles, then," Peter says, playing with the tip of the nearest. From maybe half the width of his wrist along their lengths, they taper off into thinned points, strong and prehensile enough to hold awkward sheets of particleboard steady or trade off a knife into an empty hand. It's a good thing Peter wasn't expecting eight extra cocks, or he'd have been sadly disappointed.

"Excuse you," Deadpool huffs, trying not to grin. "My tentacles are deeply sexy."

"Uh-huh," Peter says, but it's not exactly disagreement. Against all expectation, Peter finds all of him sexy. It's honestly a little mind-blowing.

He's been curious for a while now, but Peter's courage strengthens his own.

"Hey," he says without lifting his head. "Can I kiss you?"

The little thrill that wobbles in the pit of Peter's stomach distracts him from his nerves. He's seen this, knows that humans place a lot of emphasis on being good at it, but it's as foreign a concept as air used to be. He's never put his mouth on _anything_ without the intent to bite. But not too long ago, he'd never listened to sounds just for the pleasure of hearing them, never held something just because it's nice to hold. He wants to try, and he knows there's no way he'd ever hurt Peter on purpose, so...he just wants to try, that's all.

Peter flips over carefully, wriggling around to find a position that doesn't squish any delicate bits--which, on him, are not that delicate, but he appreciates the thought. Peter ends up straddling his waist, arms looped loosely around Deadpool's neck. Excitement hums between them, fuzzed by watchful concern. Peter doesn't want to push him, ready to back off the moment Deadpool changes his mind, but the anticipation is starting to get to Deadpool too.

"You sure?" Peter asks, though he can already feel the answer. It's like how he insisted on sharing his name aloud, too deliberate to be misunderstood.

"Hell, yeah. Lay it on me," Deadpool says, settling his hands on the narrow blades of Peter's hips. He has the strangest feeling he's going to want something to hold on to.

Peter bends down slowly, giving him time to move away, but Deadpool waits with his pulse thumping in his throat. The first brush of Peter's lips is feather-light, barely there, and he lifts his head immediately to meet Deadpool's eyes. Whatever he sees must be good, because he dips again, lips pressing against his a little more firmly, moving without parting. It's playful, affectionate; when Deadpool nuzzles closer, bumping the side of Peter's nose lightly with the tip of his own, the feel of Peter's smile pulls his own mouth into a matching curve.

"Okay?" Peter asks without pulling back. The buzz of breath and voice fluttering between them sends a shivery feeling down his spine.

"Mm. Again?"

He's kissed again, and again, and then he kisses back. Peter's mouth is so soft, and he sort of wants to rub every part of himself over Peter's lips to spread that amazing feeling around. Hunger ignites in Peter when he catches that thought, and Peter has to stop, resting his forehead against Deadpool's as he closes his eyes with a rueful grin.

"I'd be fine with that, you know," Peter says, lashes rising over blown-out pupils. "Getting my mouth all over you."

Every word is earnest, but there's another meaning swimming just beneath: that mammalian grooming instinct, the urge to tongue and lick. It's a bonding thing for Peter, but Deadpool's own urge to taste is maybe not as incompatible as he'd thought. He's curious; he wants to _know_.

Peter's eyes are clear and bright when he moves in again, opening his mouth and sliding his tongue over Deadpool's lower lip. Warm and wet, clever as the tips of Deadpool's tentacles, it's even nicer than lips alone. Peter does it again, nudging Deadpool's lips apart, dipping past his teeth to glide coyly along Deadpool's own.

The taste of Peter is indescribable, and he wants to sample it over and over until he knows it by heart. The inside of his mouth is the softest thing he's ever felt, and he loses himself for a while in the wonder of that and the slippery play of tongues. He's never realized just how sensitive his mouth is, barely thought of it as anything but a weapon like any other. It feels like a whole new world has opened up to him, as big as his first step on land.

When they pull apart a second time, Peter's breathing hard, need pooling in his balls and the base of his cock. "Well," he says with a shaky laugh and a grin, "I don't think you have to worry about not being good at that."

Deadpool brightens up, pleased. "Yeah? You like?"

"I like a _lot_ ," Peter assures him. He's being careful to keep his hips shifted away, but it's a point of etiquette Deadpool doesn't entirely get. Is he supposed to just pretend he can't tell that Peter's excited? It's not like he can't feel that, whether or not Peter's cock is involved.

"I, uh...I think the point is making sure my cock doesn't get involved before everybody agrees whether it should," Peter says, cheeks pinking slightly. Stupid humans and their adorable octopus skins. Deadpool wants to run his tongue over flushed skin and pale, just to see if it tastes any different. Peter chuckles. "I mean, if you want to...."

"I want to taste everything," Deadpool says, trying to send impressions he's sure are hopelessly muddled through the bits of bare skin he's touching. A life of pure darkness, lit sporadically by tiny, organic flickers that were usually a trap. The importance of touch, nuance and knowing delivered mostly over his tongue.

"Okay," Peter says. "Yeah. Can we...?"

Deadpool hears and reaches eagerly to help Peter out of his shirt, jeans unbuttoned swiftly after. Before Deadpool can strip him off entirely, Peter runs his hands under the hem of Deadpool's hoodie, brows arching a question. He's a little hesitant--the tentacles could theoretically be disembodied right now, and maybe seeing them actually attached will be weird--but Peter's enthusiasm doesn't falter.

The way the air just gets punched out of Peter by lust when he sees Deadpool's bare torso is a pretty good argument for continuing to get naked.

Running his hands down Deadpool's chest, Peter bites his lip. "Is this...did you model yourself after someone, or is this kind of what you look like naturally? I got...kind of a sense of the shape of you, but...."

"A lot of one, less of the other," Deadpool says, not quite sure how to explain. He feels like that a lot around Peter. "I sort of...translated myself? This is me if I were put together like you."

"Ah," Peter says distractedly, fingers splaying wide. With his thumbs touching, the tips of his smallest fingers don't even span the breadth of his petorals. "So, uh...all this...?"

Deadpool grins, running his hands up Peter's thighs and poking the tips of his fingers under the hems of Peter's boxers. "All mine, sweet stuff."

"Yeah? Maybe I'd better make sure," Peter teases, watching him from under lowered lashes. "You said the best way to know something is to taste it, right?"

Turns out he was right. When Peter leans over to lick a stripe up his sternum to the hollow of his throat, he finds himself in dire need of handholds.

The sheer want he feels surprises him. He hadn't been old enough during the last spawning season to participate, but he still remembers the prickly feeling under his skin as the waters of the nest were swamped with pheromones, turning off his brain and overtaking his senses. This isn't like that at all. He'd blame it on his mimicry, except it's not that precise. He'd given himself nipples and a navel after watching enough movies to notice the lack, but they don't really do anything--a fact Peter notices with a touch of regret _for_ him, which definitely requires further research.

The reactions Peter wrings out of him as he makes his way lower, mouthing along the taut muscles of his abdomen as one hand urges his thigh open wider to give Peter more room: that's just him, something he would never have known he was capable of back when his sole focus was survival. He almost wants to mourn that life, except he'd never realized what he was missing, and he's not sure his kin would even care. They'd been content; he'd been the weird one.

Suddenly it's not enough to lie there and bask in sensation. He wants Peter to feel this too, to be the one who gives him that feeling, to seek out everything that causes him pleasure. "Please," he says, settling a hand on the back of Peter's neck and reaching out with all his tentacles at once. "Let me taste you."

Peter makes a soft noise in the back of his throat but doesn't argue. "Bed?" he asks, still trying not to push. That's probably a wasted effort, because nothing Deadpool has seen or read is sounding like a bad idea right now; all he needs to know is where Peter wants to stop. "I...do you think you'd want to be inside me?"

He's so careful not to specify how, but Deadpool still gets flashes of it: his fingers, opening Peter up. His cock, which Peter is being deliberately vague about imagining in case of surprises. Even a sneaking curiosity about his tentacles, because fingers aren't exactly earmarked for sex, but damn do they feel great.

"And my tongue?"

Peter practically drags him off the couch to pull him into the next room.

There's preserving the mystery and then there's being an asshole, so Deadpool doesn't wait. Untying the drawstring of his lounge pants, he lets them drop, kicks them away, and lets Peter look his fill. From the way his pupils practically devour the brown of his eyes, the basically-human shape isn't a disappointment.

"Translated, huh?"

Deadpool grins, letting himself be pulled onto the bed and on top of Peter. "Cthulhu-me is probably four times your size, at least. _All over_."

"I believe it," Peter says, leaning up for another kiss, and then they're done with talking.

Deadpool makes his way down slowly, paying extra attention to Peter's nipples when he realizes he _should_ be sorry his are just for show. It drives Peter wild, whining and gasping as Deadpool licks and sucks, long-fingered hands flying up to clutch at Deadpool's head and hold him close when he worries the overstimulation might be too much. Peter loves it though: being pushed until he can't stay still, trying to squirm away even as his back arches up for more. He doesn't push Deadpool away until he's right on the edge of orgasm, and then he lies in a shuddering heap, stomach jerking with each kiss Deadpool plants on his way down, pulling off Peter's boxers after a swift glance for permission.

Deadpool's no connoisseur of cocks. It wouldn't have mattered to him if Peter had an innie instead of an outie; he likes Peter's because it's Peter's. It doesn't seem to him that Peter has anything to be ashamed of in this department, though. It's a nice size, a nice shape, wears that irresistible blush he has to get his tongue on, _right now_.

"Oh, fff--" Peter gasps, hands fisting in the sheets. A few threads pop, but Deadpool couldn't give less of a damn. The taste of Peter is strong here, concentrated but not unpleasant, and as he makes his way down to the base, he gets a faceful of a human scent-tag that makes him growl in approval.

Far from being scared off, Peter lets his knees fall wider apart, sending back nothing but a repeating plea to keep going, don't stop.

He can feel Peter's pulse on his tongue, can practically taste the blood under Peter's skin, but the only hunger he feels is the kind that prompts him for more of the same. His tentacles won't stay still, wanting to wrap around Peter's legs and hold him steady and still and caught. He doesn't trust the little fuckers, though, not with how much he's getting into this. He won't risk his barbs descending while Peter's in his grip.

He hasn't forgotten what got the biggest reaction out of Peter, so he lets himself play only a little while longer before pulling off, settling his hands at the backs of Peter's thighs and rocking him up until his hips leave the bed.

There's a flicker of embarrassment, the awareness of a faint strain in Peter's lower back because Peter's nothing if not flexible. All the same, Deadpool reaches for a pillow Peter's already handing him, because they are _awesome_ like that.

"Go team," Peter agrees with a breathless laugh.

Deadpool catches the stray thought that Peter should have realized sex with Deadpool would be _fun_ , and then he can't keep his curiosity contained a second longer.

It's an interesting taste, muskier but still Peter, but it's the softness inside him that really captures Deadpool's interest. He's like silk, warm and smooth, growing slick as Deadpool makes a thorough exploration of delicate tissues. He finds a particular spot that lights up Peter's nerves like Times fucking Square and teases it with the tip of his tongue until Peter's practically sobbing.

"That's," Peter gasps, "wait, how--"

Driving his tongue in deeper, he drags the wider bulk of it over that spot and feels Peter practically come unglued.

Peter's whole body locks up in pleasure, his hole clenching down tight as Deadpool slides another inch of tongue inside him. Peter's so wet with his saliva now, it's all just one frictionless glide as Deadpool licks at him, abusing that little nub with lazy undulations that spread him open for a deeper thrust.

Beyond words, reduced to breathless cries, Peter lets himself be pinned by Deadpool's hands, grabbing desperately for the base of his own cock to stave off orgasm for even a moment longer. He lasts barely a minute, and then he's spilling all over his own chest and belly, his body jerking helplessly.

The scent makes Deadpool's mouth water even more, but this time he can feel Peter's _too much too much_ threatening to tip over into actual discomfort. He sucks his tongue back in, careful to avoid that sensitive spot he's already making future plans for and moving the pillow under Peter so he can let his legs down easy. Moving up to lie beside him, he watches with unabashed pride as Peter lies there catching his breath.

Rolling his head to meet Deadpool's eyes, Peter's drop to Deadpool's mouth and get stuck there for a moment. "Ruined for all others," he manages at last. "Me, I mean. You ruined me. Holy...wow."

That answers that, at least. He may or may not be into humans, but he's definitely into Peter.

The rather insistent erection he's trying not to press into Peter's hip is just a bonus confirmation.

***

Not many guys would have the balls to burst into a place like Sister Margaret's and yell: "He likes me back!" for the whole place to hear. Then again, this is Deadpool. He'd done exactly that barely a month prior. There'd been a couple of odd looks, one half-disbelieving "Wilson's gay?" and that was that.

Weasel had figured he'd gotten it out of his system, so he really isn't prepared for Deadpool to slam through the doors, stride up to the bar, smack both hands down on the counter and announce, "Holy fuck, Weas, I just got religion, and it's that boy's ass."

Right. He is definitely clearing Buck's tab for the week, because the sheer inner fortitude it must have taken to keep from spitting his drink across the bar was impressive. And probably painful. He's going to need new sinuses after that, the poor bastard.

Taking a slow breath in, Weasel sighs it out through his nose. "Did I not tell you," he says flatly.

"But Weas...it was _amazing_."

"Did we not all _specifically_ tell you--"

"Just...perky? The perfect handful--"

"--that we wanted _no details_ when you figured your shit out."

"But how else will the world ever learn of the beauty of his bubbleicious butt? Because I'll tell you right now, I am _not_ sharing."

"If only that were true," Weasel groans into the hand he drags down his face.

He doesn't doubt that Deadpool remembers his request to the letter and is just trolling him for the fuck of it. What he won't admit is that he doesn't really mind. He's been worried about Deadpool for years now, but from the sound of it, he won't need to worry quite so much anymore. He's Spider-Man's problem now.

"Oh, but he kind of wanted to punch you for a while there? I dunno, I think he thought you were a bad influence or something. But he seems to be over it now, so that's good!"

Weasel stares. Him? A bad influence on _Deadpool?_

Maybe he'd better keep worrying about the both of them, because clearly _nobody_ in Deadpool's life qualifies as sane.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry it took so long! I'll get caught up on answering comments once I get some sleep. If you want to see what my delay is if I go off the grid again, lol, here's my [tumblr.](https://ciceqi.tumblr.com/)


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